First let's start off with a definition of ECM. It includes these major subsystems

• Information Capturing & Retrieval System
• Document Management
• Records Management & Compliance
• Web Content Management
• Information Rights Management
• Workflow

IBM's FileNET is a huge, best of breed product with a deep product offerings that complements the breadth of the WebSphere product suite. However, since acquisition of FileNET, IBM has done a poor job of making FileNET systems require any of the other products within the suite. As such, while FileNET is the well-respected leader in the ECM space, IBM does not have a complete, cleanly integrated software platform in WebSphere.

Microsoft SharePoint, in contrast, is a smaller player in ECM and has a correspondingly much lower price point, but many core ECM features are included within the 2007 offering. Additionally, all Office client products (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) become even more functional when integrated with SharePoint, and the host of Microsoft Enterprise server products work seamlessly with SharePoint. As such, it is difficult to deny the compelling price per seat and ROI case, richness of features and usability of the user interfaces provided by SharePoint. Additionally, SharePoint is touted as an Enterprise Information Management (EIM) product and provides a superset of features when compared to the ECM definition. Specifically by providing data bridges to disparate systems (e.g. ERP, CRM, custom applications) and federating deep data silos up to a common access point, and by providing the ability to manage and deploy enterprise content such as Web pages, forms and files, SharePoint delivers on the promise to connect people, process and information.